Countering Fighters in Stock ? |

Hi.
I'm currently in a game, where I am in a leading tech position.
I normally play balance mod games.. but am currently in a Stockgame.
The difference in fighter power is apparant.
I have hundreds of medium fighters at my disposal. And I know there are some other species out theere that have similar numbers, al be it weaker.
I've been running simulations where my ships fight my own fighters and I am troubled.
Am I correct to asume that the only effective countermeasure vs fighter wings are, besides my own carrier fleets, are ships loaded up with beam weaponry? (Not even PD...)
Say... If I were to run into a wing of 100 medium fighters, packed up with with rocket pods and beam weapons... what would I best set up again this?
A few tips would be welcome.
I've already ruled out PD weapons... as they simply do not pack enough punch versus the armor and shielding that I've got on my own fighters. I don't expect them to do much damage later on. Or should I just upgrade my research in that field then?
As a sidenote: I'm an organic race. I'm tinkering around with lightning weapons as an interesting option at the moment. My techlevel here is 'less than level 15').
Thanks for any tips!
Remember... We're talking Stock here!

Re: Countering Fighters in Stock ?
I've found that the only effective anti-fighter approach is to use other fighters with strategy and components to fight other fighters.
Use lots of guns and light armour and afterburners so you get full speed. set them to target fighters only and they do a nice job of screening your fleet from fighter attack
For ship defense.. bah mostly hopeless. lots of ships with lots of guns.
Use all the different PD weapons, so you get different ranges. a nice mix of ranges helps against fighters.
Don't restrict all your weapons to PD. There's lots of other weapons that hit fighters and do lots of damage. Mix it up a bit.
High level combat sensors. fighters are retardedly hard to hit and the sensor boost helps alot.
Bomblet missiles. they do the most damage for pd weapons and also long range so you can start hitting the little buggers from far away AND they hit almost every time as well.
Re: Countering Fighters in Stock ?
Don't forget weapon mounts. If the fighters are too durable to be at least crippled by taking a hit, you can augment your non-pd beam weapons with mounts. AND largemounted beam weapons are good at blowing up things other than fighters. 





Re: Countering Fighters in Stock ?
The fighter concept is: Death by 1000 little stings! So, manage around that.
When you select your weapon make sure that it CAN target fighters.
Consider emissive armor, the small versions of some weapons are below the emissivness of that armor resulting in ignoring all that damage.
Organic armor regenerates during battle, shield regenerators are level 20. Loading up on armor would be better then shields without the regenerator.